Elegy for the ‘Suits’

Image

CreditBenjamin Marra

By Sal Nunziato

Dec. 14, 2014

I WAS the worst kind of music retailer. I got high on my own supply. What a rush it was to anticipate the new release from a favorite artist. If my store was out of stock on an item, there was a good chance it was because my partner and I took the last copies home.

I was — and am — a music junkie.

We were on top of the world for a while, but as soon as business dropped, we blamed the “suits” at the labels. It was their fault for raising CD prices. It was their fault for reissuing the same music over and over. Now, almost 10 years after we closed the shop doors for good, every last note of recorded music is at my fingertips. No more waiting and anticipating. Just get up, pour some coffee and minutes later, every release is on your hard drive.

Quite frankly, I hate it.

As an ex-indie record shop owner, I never thought I’d say this, but I miss those suits at the major labels calling the shots and deciding what was worthy of release.

The suits made hits and created stars because they knew something. The suits had been around the block and back, having experienced, firsthand, everyone from Jimmy Dorsey to Jimi Hendrix to Jeff Buckley to J. Lo. I trusted them because they earned that trust, at least on a purely musical level.

There is a lack of education now, an often insufficient respect for our music history. While artists big and small continue their quest for sales and stardom, teetering among the pros and cons of the Internet, downloads and streaming, little is ever mentioned about the product itself. And product is foisted upon the masses whether we want it or not.

I say this in the wake of the producer/musician Steve Albini’s recent keynote address at the Face the Music conference in Melbourne, Australia, where he discussed, among other things, the current state of the music scene, about which he is both “satisfied and optimistic.” He likes the way things are now.

And I suppose it is wonderful, in a way, that the music of some 16-year-old kids in Chicago, say, can be heard in Malaysia with one mouse click.

But maybe this music shouldn’t be heard. The Internet has enabled anyone with a computer, a kazoo and an untuned guitar to flood the market, no matter how horrible or simply unready the music is. This devalues the great music that is truly worthy of being heard, promoted and sold. And it is much more than just an endless supply of choices. The Internet has become a forum for all, regardless of talent. Anyone can be a writer. Anyone with GarageBand can make a record.

I don’t want thousands of choices. Some choices would suffice, and the suits made that happen.

This really isn’t any different than a restaurant with a five-page menu versus a menu with five items on it. New Yorkers might remember America, on 18th Street near Broadway. You needed a back belt to lift their menu up to eye level. They served every type of cuisine imaginable, most of it mediocre. Yet America was always mobbed because the room was colossal and you could always get a seat. But if you’d taken that menu and opened a smaller restaurant, it wouldn’t have lasted a month.

The ability for anyone anywhere to create and distribute music that has the best chance ever to be heard is a double-edged sword. Citing the documentary about the Detroit band Death, Mr. Albini explained that the band’s “sole album was released in a perfunctory edition” in the mid-’70s “and disappeared until a copy of it was digitized and made public on the Internet.”

The band found a new audience and now has the career it was originally denied. That’s nice. But not every story is like Death’s, and many would argue that a brief return to the big time is not really a career. I know the suits would.

I would never discourage any musician, however green, from making music. But I would strongly discourage most from releasing that music just because they can. It seems like a kick to the faces of the genuinely talented and deserving, all because of a technicality called the Internet. Where are the suits when you need them?